Sophia’s mother gets her comeuppance after she leaves Russia. Basically, she had to explain the King of Prussia what happened and was later exiled to Paris. Oh, and everyone hated her.

Bloodletting is just draining some blood out of the body by cutting into an artery. The established medical thought was that disease was caused by an imbalance in the 4 humors, which are bodily fluids. It was thought that you could regain the balance by getting rid of whatever you had too much of. Blood was easily drained, so that was an easy thing to try. Of course it didn't work, but they just kept trying.

Hereditary monarchies are doomed to fail due to their dependency on a GOOD heir. A capable heir. Sometimes there's none. But sometimes the heirs just don't turn out good. Or, in Peter's case, disastrious. Both him and Sophie (Ekaterina) were German, but Sophie was willing to become Russian in good Viking tradition of deeds before blood. Peter was a catastrophe. Then again, secularizing is always a good thing... so he wasn't ALL bad. Still. He was a failure in every other possible way. Except for Prussia. Prussia was VERY happy that he was such a failure... Wargames are good practice for commanders. Wargames without opponents are not. You play wargames against your top generals, and guests of the court of field renown. Not with your maids and without opponents. Also, bloodletting only helps against ONE particular illness - too much iron in the blood, called Haemochromatosis. It's like a clock that is broken. That also shows the correct time once or twice a day, depending on the clock. But against everything else bloodletting is counterproductive. Also, most pneumonia is bacterial. Viral pneumonia is really rare. Either way, without treatment with antibiotics, surviving pneumonia is very hard. And antibiotics were only invented after the first World War. So... yeah. She was LUCKY af. Peter was, as well. Surviving smallpox was not an easy feat.

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